(20-01-2013 08:14 PM)amyb Wrote: Aseptic said it well. If you are not open to other possible interpretations, it does damage the credibility.

Also, the idea of "putting the puzzle pieces together" can be explained by the human tendency to want to see patterns and agency behind things, whether such patterns and agency exist or not.

There's nothing wrong with seeing patterns in principle, many brilliant people do it. But many brilliant people go over the edge into conspiracy and paranoia. For example, Jack Kevorkian, the life control activist (I'm trying to be politically correct here, but I called my necromancer CRPG character after him) was quite a gifted and talented person, but still he harbored some conspiracy ideas and I think he refused to use cars because of that, or something.

Sometimes I notice the "memes", they are like Lego blocks, they seemingly fit together, don't exclude each other. Such a person's worldview then may be put together of quite a colony of symbiotic memes.
Atlanteans in ancient times, then replaced by Anunnaki in prehistoric times, then Jesus had a wife and children, then Templars and freemasons got to some ancient alien technology from the times of Jesus, and now they want to control everyone through NWO, but friendly aliens are here to stop them.

Of course it isn't all wrong; seeing patterns and agency has helped our species survive. That doesn't mean it hasn't also led to a lot of cognitive errors.

Funny you should mention Occam's Razor, when you've been making a lot of assumptions and unfounded claims that you'll survive death and you have some kind of soul or astral body or something. The simplest answer, which makes the least assumptions and is based on reality and observation, would be that people are dead after they die, at least as I see it.

(24-01-2013 02:47 AM)amyb Wrote: Of course it isn't all wrong; seeing patterns and agency has helped our species survive. That doesn't mean it hasn't also led to a lot of cognitive errors.

Funny you should mention Occam's Razor, when you've been making a lot of assumptions and unfounded claims that you'll survive death and you have some kind of soul or astral body or something. The simplest answer, which makes the least assumptions and is based on reality and observation, would be that people are dead after they die, at least as I see it.

You don't know the environment where I come from. I come from a family and broad circle of family friends who are basically new agey neo-hippies. They were starved for spirituality in the grey and dull era of Communism and now they enjoy it to the fullest. Of course, it's all strictly voluntary, my folks protected our freedom (no baptism, etc) and my two brothers are very critical of religions and so on, if they ever talk about them. But they basically don't care.

By far and large, I'm the one using Occam's razor the most where I come from. As I said, I'm a guy of experience, better said, perception. I'm something like an athlete or chess player, in the sense that I watch myself and focus on myself, because I am my own instrument. And I need a theory to explain, or at least catalogize what I observe.
And I use Occam's razor on everything that can't explain or otherwise bring more light to my observations. If I make assumptions, then always with a qualifier. Some are more probable/important/necessary, some less, some almost not. It's a jungle of thought, but in this jungle there's a natural order.

For example, right now my head hurts like goddamn fucking hell, exactly where the right side Chi meridian leads. When I press it on my neck, it stops hurting above that, as if I restricted the flow of pain. Therefore, I know which way it flows. And I sure am not in mood to consider how I'm imagining things or how I need peer-reviewed journals to know anything.

I never said you can't believe it's magic unicorns that live in your brain and kick you in the chi meridian, causing headaches or whatever. I just said that it's not convincing to anyone but you, and that's why people don't necessarily accept it at face value.

(20-01-2013 05:06 PM)smidgen Wrote: Like a posted on another thread today. I lived in a haunted house. Shortly after moving in friends and family members started saying that they would see my son standing on the second floor landing. Well it would always happen when my son was not home. It would be on weekend when he was with his father. Then we talked to the neighbors and they said that a boy had died in a fire about the same age as my son. And that he scared away the people who lived there before us. I know what I saw and what I experienced while living in that house. No one can tell me it didn't happen or it was just in my head because it wasn't just me experiencing it. So that's my story and I'm stickin to it. I don't need anyone to agree or disagree just my two cents thrown in.

Personally, I can accept stories like these. Sometimes odd things genuinely do happen and they have no current explanation. However, what I can't accept is the conclusion; rapidly drawn out of ignorance and with a lack of any other explanation: "Ghosts done it". Let's call it a "Ghost of the gaps" argument.

I too have had two unusual experiences in my life, and only one of them has a decent amount of plausible explanations. The second; I can't explain even if I tried. But the fact that I don't know the answer(s) doesn't mean that I should assign one to them. Perhaps there are things which occur on the quantum level that we cannot currently explain. Perhaps they don't occur clearly enough or often enough to be observed and tested in controlled conditions. Who knows. Without sufficient evidence, even a nearly invisible vortex of incredible density that eats planets sounds ridiculous. But with enough evidence, we simply call them Black Holes. For this reason, when people tell me that strange and unexplained things have happened to them, I don't (always) conclude that they're crazy or mistaken. I maintain a healthy skepticism - up to and including being skeptical of their potential craziness. I'm open to a scientific explanation for phantom footsteps and spectral apparitions.

But while I may be open to a future scientific explanation, I'm not open to drawing a conclusion where no such conclusion has any right being drawn. For the sake of argument - because I don't know you personally - I'll concede that you did witness something. Perhaps it was not a trick of the eye or a glitch of the mind; but something genuine that took place in our material world in the middle of space-time. Ok. Even if that is the case, we do not currently know the mechanism behind this occurance. We don't know who or what or how it occured, and for that very reason, we cannot draw any conclusion whatsoever. The most we can possibly say at this time is "I don't know".

(14-12-2012 03:09 PM)conkles Wrote: When we die, all the energy holding our molecules together will be decomposed and effectively given back to the planet we took them from. After all, we are just atoms. And none of them are "ours," because as you sit and type and think there are atoms you just ate being put into you and atoms being brushed off yours skin. One day some of the atoms inside you had once been in a stalk of corn, which had some carbon dioxide it had taken from the air in photosynthesis. Most of that carbon is from engine emissions.
Even farther back, any single atom in any of those molecules had to be synthesized by immense heat and pressure, often only available in the stars. So we are part car, part plant, part stardust, and part anything we inhale or ingest, and in turn what they have ingested.

At the same time, all of those atoms have electrons, and quantum theory has shown us that electrons can be at the different places at the same time, or appear to transport over space and time, and exhibit other strange behavior that we cannot even begin to fully comprehend.

Well said.

"In both religion and science, some people are dishonest, exploitative, incompetent and exhibit other human failings." Rupert Sheldrake

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived & dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." John F Kennedy

I like ghosts, they make good stories. Heck my avatar is of a ghost from The Blackwell Legacy games who is stuck with a host who in turn helps other spirits crossover to the other side since he can't move on himself. To me ghosts are various natural phenomenon that have either been explained or yet to be explained. Mostly it is in the mind and just misinterpretations on film.